BYOB wrote:

tennyson wrote:

BYOB wrote:

Sorry, can't go back and post tennyson's quote. This is a response to post #15.

Then what reason was given for the stop? If jaywalking was the reason, then that makes the officers initial reaction even worse.

Forensics can only tell you if someone touched the gun, not what their intentions were. You can equally touch something with the intention to take it, or with the intention of pushing it away. And unfortunately, the guy who could tell you is dead. Therefore we will only ever get the perspective of the officer, which is important, but by no means the whole story.

The problem in a nut shell, as I see it, is that whenever a police officer decides to roll up right in the face of people without knowing what's going on, the situations go badly every single time. In this case, whether it was for shoplifting or jaywalking, the officer decided it was appropriate to race his vehicle right up to the person, close enough that the person could slam the officer's door back shut. It wasn't necessary. In the case of Tamir Rice, the little kid who was shot and killed while playing with a toy gun, the officers pulled right up to him, jumped out and shot him. Once again, without knowing what was going on. There have been many other officers that said that isn't how they are to approach a situation like that. I expect officers to approach an unknown from a bit of a distance until they get a handle on the situation, not insert themselves directly in the face of a potential threat. You can see the results of doing things that way. People end up dead. In this country, it is incumbent upon the officer to only use the amount of force necessary to neutralize the threat and no more. If, as an officer, you don't agree with that way of doing things, go get into a different line of work. And if people think police should be allowed to use whatever amount of force they feel like at the time, then people should change the law.

You mean the reaction to Brown reaching in to apparently get at the officers gun ? 


 

I'm not sure what you mean.

I mean once a person attempts to take a police officers gun (assuming that this did occur), then the whole dynamics of the situation from the officers perspective changes. It than becomes something that is potentially lethal. 



 

BYOB wrote:

Agreed on the fact of if someone attempts to take an officer's gun then it becomes potentially lethal. But it bothers me that we are assuming that's exactly what happened. I have never ever heard of a case where an officer has said "the person didn't try to take my gun, but I shot him to death anyway." Human nature is to defend your actions be they right, wrong, or in bewtween. My point was that even if you are assuming that he was trying to take it to shoot the officer, which makes little sense to me, he didn't get it. In fact, he was the one shot I believe. The threat of the person trying to get the officer's weapon was over once he was running away. The officer could have simply got in his car and locked the door if he was worried that the person was coming back for him after running away, while waiting for back-up. He really didn't have to shoot him dead.The kid was not superhuman and able to tear a car apart with his bare hands. Do I think that officer Wilson went to work that day looking to kill someone? No. Do I think it could have been handled better? Yes. We rightfully have a higher expectation of police officers than the average person on how to handle bad situations. When you receive the ability to have power over others, you should equally have the responsibilities that go with it.

I truly think that if the officer would have approached the kid from a distance, things would have gone significantly different. The kid wouldn't have had any access to the officer or any of his weapons to begin with. And that's where it seems to have started to go horribly wrong.

I certainly agree if it would have started differently, it likely would have ended differently. But, that is not what happened. I am only going by what I believe was in the final report. The report is just that. It is the best info that could be gathered. It can never be 100% be verified. Like I said, IF Brown did actually attempt to grab the officers gun which I believe the final report supported, then that changes everything. 

As to the whole community situation, I DO believe the community itself had much power that it abdicated. The voting percentage in the community was abysmal. By becoming more involved in the community, voting, and then ultimately placing people in power that are true representatives of the community much will be accomplished. Hopefully that is one of the takeaways of this story here (and elsewhere). I would like to hear all place more emphasis on this piece from the press to the local communities themselves. 




 

Last edited by tennyson (3/22/2015 1:11 pm)

BYOB wrote:

tennyson wrote:

BYOB wrote:

Agreed on the fact of if someone attempts to take an officer's gun then it becomes potentially lethal. But it bothers me that we are assuming that's exactly what happened. I have never ever heard of a case where an officer has said "the person didn't try to take my gun, but I shot him to death anyway." Human nature is to defend your actions be they right, wrong, or in bewtween. My point was that even if you are assuming that he was trying to take it to shoot the officer, which makes little sense to me, he didn't get it. In fact, he was the one shot I believe. The threat of the person trying to get the officer's weapon was over once he was running away. The officer could have simply got in his car and locked the door if he was worried that the person was coming back for him after running away, while waiting for back-up. He really didn't have to shoot him dead.The kid was not superhuman and able to tear a car apart with his bare hands. Do I think that officer Wilson went to work that day looking to kill someone? No. Do I think it could have been handled better? Yes. We rightfully have a higher expectation of police officers than the average person on how to handle bad situations. When you receive the ability to have power over others, you should equally have the responsibilities that go with it.

I truly think that if the officer would have approached the kid from a distance, things would have gone significantly different. The kid wouldn't have had any access to the officer or any of his weapons to begin with. And that's where it seems to have started to go horribly wrong.

I certainly agree if it would have started differently, it likely would have ended differently. But, that is not what happened. I am only going by what I believe was in the final report. The report is just that. It is the best info that could be gathered. It can never be 100% be verified. Like I said, IF Brown did actually attempt to grab the officers gun which I believe the final report supported, then that changes everything. 

As to the whole community situation, I DO believe the community itself had much power that it abdicated. The voting percentage in the community was abysmal. By becoming more involved in the community, voting, and then ultimately placing people in power that are true representatives of the community much will be accomplished. Hopefully that is one of the takeaways of this story here (and elsewhere). I would like to hear all place more emphasis on this piece from the press to the local communities themselves. 




 

I kind of feel like we may be starting to go around in circles. How 'bout you?
I'll just say this. Reports only matter if we learn from them where we can do anything different to prevent the same outcomes of the same actions. Which is why I get so hung up on what initially happens in these types of situations. If we don't use them for that purpose, they are just a news report and nothing more.

And when I really think about it, I don't really care if someone had their hands up or not, so to me the whole "it's a lie!" title of this thread is irrelevant.

I don't know that it is irrelevant overall. I think the statement (that it is a total lie) however does not help overall either. The investigation implies that it was not the truth and that was all that needed to come out. To focus on it is not good. The reason I would not call it irrelevant overall is that I believe is spurned nationwide bad reactions from looting to cop shootings, etc. BOTH sides need to learn from all the mistakes. 

As an aside, do you believe (as me) that the local community involvement in their own communities (there and elsewhere) would go a long way to solving some of the problems ?  By that I mean total involvement in voting for and having people running in the positions that most effect their day to day issues. 







 

Goose wrote:

tennyson wrote:

As an aside, do you believe (as me) that the local community involvement in their own communities (there and elsewhere) would go a long way to solving some of the problems ?  By that I mean total involvement in voting for and having people running in the positions that most effect their day to day issues. 


 

One might say the same at the national level, no?

That is EXACTLY why I said there and elsewhere. 


 

tennyson wrote:

BYOB wrote:

tennyson wrote:

I certainly agree if it would have started differently, it likely would have ended differently. But, that is not what happened. I am only going by what I believe was in the final report. The report is just that. It is the best info that could be gathered. It can never be 100% be verified. Like I said, IF Brown did actually attempt to grab the officers gun which I believe the final report supported, then that changes everything. 

As to the whole community situation, I DO believe the community itself had much power that it abdicated. The voting percentage in the community was abysmal. By becoming more involved in the community, voting, and then ultimately placing people in power that are true representatives of the community much will be accomplished. Hopefully that is one of the takeaways of this story here (and elsewhere). I would like to hear all place more emphasis on this piece from the press to the local communities themselves. 




 

I kind of feel like we may be starting to go around in circles. How 'bout you?
I'll just say this. Reports only matter if we learn from them where we can do anything different to prevent the same outcomes of the same actions. Which is why I get so hung up on what initially happens in these types of situations. If we don't use them for that purpose, they are just a news report and nothing more.

And when I really think about it, I don't really care if someone had their hands up or not, so to me the whole "it's a lie!" title of this thread is irrelevant.

I don't know that it is irrelevant overall. I think the statement (that it is a total lie) however does not help overall either. The investigation implies that it was not the truth and that was all that needed to come out. To focus on it is not good. The reason I would not call it irrelevant overall is that I believe is spurned nationwide bad reactions from looting to cop shootings, etc. BOTH sides need to learn from all the mistakes. 

As an aside, do you believe (as me) that the local community involvement in their own communities (there and elsewhere) would go a long way to solving some of the problems ?  By that I mean total involvement in voting for and having people running in the positions that most effect their day to day issues. 









 

Well, I think we might have to agree to disagree on whether it was the dead kid or the slogan that caused the chaos. I do agree that looting and harming police because you're angry is not good in any way. The reason I said I thought the "it's a lie!" thing was irrelevant is because if the report states that some people saw him with his hands up for a short time, and some people didn't, then you can hardly call it a lie, as a lie implies that no one saw him with his hands up at any time but just said so anyway. It wasn't a lie, it was different people seeing events at different times and perspectives.


I think that much more community involvement would go some way to helping, but I'm not convinced it fully affects the individual police/person interaction. You could probably make the argument that electing judges that represent your ideals and legal expectations as a community would go a step farther to help. But the problem with that is, even when done, that's a level that kicks in after the fact of the actual police/person encounter. It would help offset, which is good, but it wouldn't necessarily change the initial problem. As far as mayors and other local politicians go, I think more involvment is never a bad thing, but again, on an on-the-street level I don't know that it would be a huge help, just some.